John Marshall Harlan II

“ Mahon, supra, 260 U.S. at page 416, 43 S.Ct. at page 160: 'We are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change.'
We should treat L-208 as being what in every realistic sense it was, a temporary confiscation of respondents' property. The Government is not absolved from providing just compensation here because the WPB may have lacked authority to 'take' respondents' mines in order to free the miners for essential work in other mines. ”

“ I dissent because I believe that the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution requires the Government to pay just compensation to the respondents for the temporary 'taking' of their property accomplished by WPB Order L-208. ”

“ In all of them the Government was administering a nationwide regulatory system rather than a narrowly confined order directed to a small, singled-out category of individual concerns. Furthermore, none of the regulations involved in those cases prohibited the profitable exploitation of a legal business. ”